Bassripple

Actually the song "cornershop" is pretty good, i like the style of it haha. I guess i did leave this open to ANY style of remix but that's ok, I am a fan of most music remixed or not.

I can never decide if i like house or reggae, if you had to choose what would you say?

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barbarella

Totally agree this is Brilliant. Haven't they done anything else similar to this which would be worth a listen?

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jackhammer

House and Reggae music is a thousand miles apart. The cornershop track was remixed by Norman Cook AKA...

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Gavin B.

I don't like any of the remixes of Marley's music. Marley is the rare musician who is a sacred cow and remixing his music is an act of blasphemy. It's a bit like doing disco remixes of Buddy Holly or Robert Johnson's music. I'm not disrespecting those who like the remixes because musical taste is in the ears of the beholder. I've heard authorized dub mixes of Marley's work and they work because Bob had some creative control over the finished product.

Rita Marley has made some bad decisions on the licensing Bob's recordings at Tuff Gong and as a result there are far too many bad compilations of his music and bad remixes of his music. I don't think you get a complete picture of Bob's amazing legacy unless you buy his original albums because so many of his musical gems never appear on anthologies. The same old 30-40 early songs produced by Lee Perry or Leslie Kong keep appearing over and over on compilations.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of Marley's earliest music remastered for better sound fidelity. For instance the sound quality of Wailers' Burnin', Rastaman Vibration and Catch A Fire could all improve with a 24 bit remastering.

Dr_Rez

Have you heard Chant Down Babylon? Fantastic tribute album to marley with quite a few modern day hiphop artists and great uses of samples. At least check it out if you have not heard it, you may be surprised.

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Gavin B.

I have an unlimited download music service, so I downloaded Chant Down Babylon and can give you instant feedback on my first listening.

I liked the twangy guitar riff that opens Concrete Jungle and recurs throughout the song. It reminds me guitar playing on Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks and John Barry's old 007 movie soundtracks. It's a song that would work well on my song lists or my radio show song rotation. I also like Rakim's vocal and rap. He's always been my favorite old school rapper.

No More Trouble works because Erika Badu has a feel for the music. I like how she added the chorus from 'Dem Belly Full but in the long run I'd rather just hear Erika sing a cover of the song that doesn't compete with the Marley vocal. I've never been a big fan of ex post facto overdubbed duets with the original artist. It seems contrived.

I'm not sure if any of the other cuts do anything more than add a drum machine, a rap track, some turntable moves and alter the tempo of Bob's songs. The shuffle tempo of the drum machine overpowers the magnificent vocal and playing of the Wailers on Jamming. I found that cut in particular as being migraine inducing. MC Lyte is a great rapper but it's bad choice of material for her.

The voice over segues between songs were annoying. The artistic attitude of the recording gave me the feeling that the album is not so much a tribute to Marley's reggae as a misguided attempt to reshape reggae to fit a hip-hop template.

I'm not saying that folks who like that sort of thing are lame but it's not my own cup of musical tea. Genre crossover and fusion music often dilute the power of the original source and end up reshaping distinctly original forms of music into one big mutated gene pool of mediocre but commerically viable music. I'm not a musical purist but the legacy of our musical past is just as important to me, as the past and present tense of our music folkways...maybe even more so.

The greatest singing stylists keep the focus on the interpretation of the song itself and rarely add vocal pyrotechnics or other musical distractions to draw attention away from the lyrics and music of the song. Celine Dion is a horrible song stylist because she takes the attention off the beauty of the song by using her multi-octave voice to pummel the song into a homogenized pulp. Celine might as well be singing the same song over and over for her insufferable lack of interpretive imagination. She knows nothing of lyrical phrasing, timing, vocal dynamics or those indefinable qualities of soul and passion.

I got a similar feeling about some of the performances on Chant Down Babylon. It takes more than vocal talent to interpret reggae music in a convincing and authentic manner. It's hard to praise the glory of Rastafari if you don't know Rasta.

Bob Marley had thin and reedy voice but only a fool would attempt to surpass the heartfelt soul and passion he breathed into his songs. Not even Marley's longtime bandmate Bunny Wailer, who had a far better singing voice than Bob, could add any new dimensions to Bob's original interpretation of his own songs.

The Chant Down Babylon album isn't technically sampling because the original musical base is left intact, but that turns out to be more problematic, since the resulting vocal and instrumental overdubs are awkwardly meshed with the originals. It struck me as an act of musical revisionism in the name of making Marley's music relevant, but the universal truths of Bob's music are timeless.

I'm not disrespecting your musical taste but one of the reasons why I listen to old school reggae music is because it's not hip-hop. Old school roots reggae music is free of all the bling-bling, flash, attitude, sexual posturing and vulgar values of contemporary hip hop.

I dislike the direction that both reggae music and hip hop have taken over the past twenty years. Both reggae and hip hop began as consciousness music and an outcry against the establishment by the powerless. Now reggae and hip hop are all about sexual boasting, celebrity, cash money and coke consumption. I wish reggae and hip hop would stop celebrating the vacuousness of the livin' large and get back on the roots and consciousness track

Bob Marley never revelled in his wealth, his celebrity status his drug use or his sexual conquests because his Rastafarian faith keep him true to his life long mission of one love and freedom. I've visited his humble sparsely furnished home on Hope Road in Kingston and the man simply didn't care about the allure of the material world.

jackhammer

It is only the mainstream bands that are guilty of distorting the reason for Reggae and Hip Hop. There are plenty of bands and artists still doing great things in both scenes. They are unfortunately buried under the banal rubbish that dominates todays media.

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Bassripple

Are you saying that because two different genres of music are different you cant have trouble saying which you love more? Maybe im taking this statement the wrong way, forgive me if that's the case.

I agree with this statement 100% a lot of this mainstream stuff is garbage.

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jackhammer

Yeah you took it the wrong way

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Bassripple

There his a whole CD of Bob Marley remixes on amazon, one of which is Sun Is Shining - (Silverbeam remix) But it just sounds like Sun Is Shining - (Hard House club mix) slowed down haha both are on the same CD.

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